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Month: April 2004

Another day, another pack of idiots who don’t understand that the First Amendment doesn’t just kick in when you’re 18. Quote of the day from the cop who confiscated a 15-year-old boy’s sketchbook for, well, offending him: “We assume that he deliberately took an action of his own free will, which he reasonably should have known was against the code of conduct.” As a matter of fact I don’t think it was a freudian slip, no.

A really wonderful essay over at Powells.com clarifies yet another reason that literature is just too damn important to be entrusted to corporate copyright holders in perpetuity: Because it’ll mess with Mr. Toad. And folks, that’s just wrong.

Hot puppies, the Conet Project has been re-released. Music critics who didn’t annoint this as album of the year last time it appeared (several years ago) don’t deserve to have copies, but the rest of us can hook up as a reasonable price.

The headline on this article as posted at USAToday.com is “USA TODAY culture enabled deceit.” Phrases used include “virus of ‘fear,” “palpably defective” (lines of communication between departments and staff), “complex structural deficiencies,” and “separate responsibility from accountability.” The full report is here. The report also includes the phrase “internal lines of communication at USA TODAY are down and broken,” which the curious will find on page 6, and “some line editors say they resented being cut from meaningful participation in decision-making,” which is on page 7. You’ll find an interesting bit on page 9 —

Had [Jack Kelley’s] USA TODAY sponsors taken the time to listen and compare what he said with what he had written, they would have known that he was betraying them and those who heard him. At least once, for reasons known only to him, he publicly castigated the newspaper that employed him and sponsored his speeches.

Holy fuck. Representatives of the Catholic Church are volunteering babies as drug-company guinea pigs? Read the article and see if you can put a better face on it than that — and remind me again how aborting a fetus is a worse outrage than something like this. What the hell? What the hell? Call me crazy (or, more accurately, note that partway up the family tree some of ’em were in fact Catholic), but I expected better from the Church. Seriously, I did.